Tin shui wai dik ye yu mo

Stories of domestic abuse are often so unreal or surreal, if/when they are made into movies they often come off as unbelievable or too melodramatic, leaving the facts of the case alone to provide the emotional impact. The aesthetics of the film itself seem less of a priority. The acting and direction of Night and Fog are so pitch perfect, that even though the story starts at the end so we know the result and it's unraveled through flashbacks and police interrogations, it plays out like a mystery. It's not the what of what happened but the how of what happened that compels. And don't write off Jingchu Zhang as just another pretty face. She nails the part of an ambitious peasant girl from the heartland, in this case Sichuan, who appears to have made it to the top by marrying a Hong Kong man. Her sisters made it only halfway, marrying men from the industrial Shenzhen. This is the ladder of success many young women from the disadvantaged rural areas attempt to climb. No matter that many of the men they pursue, especially the ones from Hong Kong, might already have a wife.

Director Ann Hui places the micro of domestic abuse into a wider macro social context with such honesty it's scary. The film reveals a plight of a segment of the Chinese population it hurts to know about. Hui pushes hard on the social buttons of an issue that many would like to ignore, but that's what gives the film its power. This is one of the more painfully sad films I've seen in a long time. I put it on when it was already way past my bed time, thinking I'd just get a feel for it and fall asleep. Well, a feel for it I got, and ended up staring at it, bug-eyed, the entire two hour runtime.